


akin to the wild torrents

by stargirls



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, It's an oldie but a goodie, another prompt fill!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 07:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13853034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargirls/pseuds/stargirls
Summary: Barry isn’t quite used to the ocean.





	akin to the wild torrents

**Author's Note:**

> an old prompt fill from awhile back! i've been super busy lately, which is why cyberpunk au and end of an era updates are taking so very long, and i promise i'll be back on it as soon as possible. in the meantime: some blupjeans for the soul.
> 
> enjoy!

Barry isn’t quite used to the ocean.

Part of it is, of course, that it isn’t his world’s ocean. This one ebbs and curls along the coast in shimmering, turquoise peaks, leaving its imprint behind in miles of black sand. When he steps down from the porch and stands on the beach, looking outwards to a pale horizon, the sand shifts and glitters at his feet. He can’t begin to imagine the minerals that comprise every granule, turning the ground beneath him into a fluid, shifting landscape of light and shadow.

Geology isn’t his area of focus, but it is, he will admit, welcome reprieve from the ocean. There isn’t a scientific principle in any planar system he can apply to the ocean. The locals here call it a benevolent god, who’d long ago struck a deal with the three pillars of existence. Fate, Death, and Time had all conceded to the power of the ocean, and together, they’d agreed to watch over the people under their jurisdiction. Its generosity is vast, the people say, but its temper volatile. When the ocean is angered, as the cautionary tales go, its ferocity knows no bounds.

Of course, Barry’s never been a person of faith, but he sits at the window, watching waves lash the beach and surge up into the downpour, and he can’t help but think that the locals might’ve gotten something right.

“Hey, you.”

Someone flops into the chair opposite him, pushing it back a good few inches, and Barry’s startled out of his reverie. It serves him right, honestly, because he’s committed the most grievous error a scientist is capable of. He’s let himself get distracted, and even worse, he’s been staring out a window all the time. The view in front of him is impressive, granted: their villa is right on the shore, courtesy of the locals, and he couldn’t imagine a better vantage point. But their residency here isn’t meant for sightseeing. It’s meant for research, which he isn’t accustomed to forgetting so easily. The ocean, it seems, is a terrible influence.

Speaking of terrible influences. The coffee mug pushed towards him is filled to the brim, steaming and topped with a heap of whipped cream, but he catches something distinctly sharp and vaguely gasoline-scented. “Is that…?”

Lup rests her feet atop the table, stretches back, and snatches up a bundle of papers. “People ’round here call it _hurricane extract_. Kickass name, right? It’s s’posed to be good for a buzz. Like alcohol, but a stimulant instead of a depressant. I think this world might be my favorite one yet.”

She takes a long sip from her own mug, and Barry watches her, wanting to generate some sort of comeback but failing miserably at his own game. Lup tends to inspire speechlessness in him. Even now, when they’ve been working together for cycles, exploring each new world together and conducting painstaking experiments to verify their discoveries, he can’t bring himself to feel comfortable around her. It’s her larger-than-life presence, he thinks. The way she doesn’t just occupy a room; she owns it, fills it to the brim and pushes at the corners. Her voice is full and loud, her gestures are wide, her expressions theatrical and glazed with emotion. Even now, sitting across from him and scanning over sheets of their handiwork, she looks more at home than he could ever imagine.

This year they’ve charged themselves with understanding the laws of physics and arcane interaction in this world, formulating a primer with which to study other worlds. Davenport had said it was the closest they’ve ever been to home, but Barry can’t fathom it—not with the ocean at their doorstep. Logically, he knows the readings align well enough with data from their plane of origin; he’s reviewed the IPRE’s reports a thousand times over. But this place and its tumultuous, fickle waters are too alien for his liking. Staring at them is starting to turn his stomach.

He’s gone back to staring.

Barry shakes himself out of it just in time to hear Lup snort into a pile of whipped cream. “Holy shit,” she says, taking a bite out of the top. “You’re really out of it today, huh?”

Maybe—no, most likely, she’s right, and coffee with a frightening local stimulant is exactly what he needs. “Yeah,” he mumbles, and tries a sip of the brew. Of course, it hardly tastes like anything, but it burns like acid, and the sharp scent of gasoline fills his nostrils as he chokes it down. Lup watches him over her mug, arching an eyebrow.

It only takes her a couple seconds to crack a tiny, nondescript grin. “That bad, huh?”

“No, it’s—” He inhales sharply, forgets about the gasoline, and breaks into a wretched cough. “It’s—it’s fine!”

Lup actually does snicker, then, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head. “I know,” she says through a bout of giggles. “Trust me, I know, but it works like a charm. In a couple minutes you’ll be back in it and ready to go.”

“If I don’t die of chemical poisoning first.” Barry indulges himself in one last cough, and gets another laugh out of Lup for his dramatics. He goes to reach for one of their several documents, straining forward from where he sits, and catches the ocean out of the corner of his eye again. The water is significantly darker and swirling, and he surveys it with a slight furrow in his brow.

A stack of paper lands heavily on the table. He jumps and swivels to see Lup, who’s scrutinizing him even more heavily than before. “What’s your deal?”

“My—my deal?”

“You keep starin’ out the window, babe.” Lup points the toe of her dark, chunky heel at him. “See somethin’ out there you like?”

Barry rolls his eyes, but his gaze lands somewhere off to the side, in the smooth wood that makes up their wall. “Nothing. Just… the ocean, that’s all.”

She shifts forward, and it catches him off guard, because she actually looks intrigued. “What about the ocean?”

“Like I said, it’s—it’s nothing.”

“Wouldn’t be starin’ so much if it was nothing.”

He exhales and focuses on the collar of Lup’s vest. It’s light and made of fleece and pops outward, framing her neck and the fine cut of her jawline. “The ocean’s just… weird, okay? I never saw it before we left, only in pictures, and seeing it in a completely different world is even weirder. I—I shouldn’t be getting this distracted over the fuckin’ ocean, but… well, I guess that’s where I’m at today, huh?”

She’s going to ridicule him for sure. Barry won’t even feel bad about it. He’s practically setting himself up to be made fun of, and besides, Lup’s jibes never do any real harm. Absently, he takes another sip from his mug; waiting for the joke, the critique, the casual snark. His throat starts to burn again, but he doesn’t much care.

The joke doesn’t come. Lup makes it through another sip of coffee and says, “It is pretty weird, isn’t it?”

Barry looks up a little too quickly. “Uh—uh, yeah, it is.”

“I mean, I dunno if it takes the contender for _weirdest_ world so far… remember the flesh-eating forest?” She shudders. “Glad I didn’t have to learn that one the hard way.”

“Or the civilization that lived upside-down.”

“Oh, fuck, that one was completely bizarre. I was getting vertigo just trying to talk to them.” Lup pinches the bridge of her nose and makes a face Barry recognizes instantly as _Yikes_. “Although I guess to them, we were the upside-down ones, hm?”

“Huh. I mean, you’re right.”

She cups a hand to her ear. “Yes, _do_ say that again. I can never get enough of it.”

“Oh, please.” He rolls his eyes again, and Lup pins him with a good-natured smirk. No matter how much time they’ve spent together, there’s something about her gaze that makes him feel like a specimen under a surgical lamp. “I—uh, I didn’t mean to space out so much. Sorry.”

Lup shrugs. “Hey, it’s cool. We’re all exhausted. Every intrepid scientist needs their second wind from somewhere—that’s what that’s for,” she says, nodding to the mug. “It’s horrible, but…”

“Fuck,” says Barry, and he can’t resist a chuckle. “It’s _so horrible_.”

“So horrible.” She tips her head back and grins at the ceiling, and the mug wavers precariously in her hands. “I mean, it actually doesn’t taste that bad to me, but I think that’s because I’ve been holed up with you in here for so long that I’ve forgotten what food is supposed to taste like. And that it isn’t supposed to, y’know, scorch your esophagus going down. Pretty sure that’s not a normal thing, right? It’s not a normal thing?”

He gives her a shrug right back, rolling his shoulders and wincing at the sheer amount of joints that pop along his spine. “How would I know?”

“Fair point.” A gust of wind rattles the window, and Lup glances towards the glass, rain-spattered but holding fast. “Good gods. We sure picked a good day for a research sesh, didn’t we?”

“Definitely.” This time, Barry forces his stare away from the water. He pulls a document lazily towards him, then says, “This is… really domestic, y’know?”

Lup’s ears twitch. “Domestic?”

The ocean swallowing him up sounds pretty good right about now. “I just meant, uh… this probably wasn’t what everybody back at home had in mind when the IPRE sent us off on our big grand quest. Sitting in some seaside cabin, reviewing data, drinking godsawful coffee. It’s just… just kinda funny, that’s all.”

There is a very terrible, mortifying beat of silence, during which Barry considers walking out the door and straight into the water. He’s still heavily thinking it over when Lup smiles, far softer and more genuine than he’s used to. It’s a shock to his system, to say the least. He _knows_ she can be sincere—he’s seen her compassion, her advocacy, her resilience in the face of their stubbornness—but this is a remarkably private setting, and she’s smiling at him like he’s just said something wonderful. (Maybe he has. After all this time, he doesn’t know her well enough to tell.)

“It is,” she says. “It’s hilarious. We’re scientists and explorers, taking samples and writing reports and drinking the worst coffee in any planar system just to keep ourselves awake. We’re never gonna be those brilliant, shining heroes in their storybooks. Never gonna be conventional, y’know?”

Lup tilts her head to peer out into the storm, and Barry watches her. He watches the dark, roiling waters of the ocean reflected in her eyes and the way her feathery undercut splays out across her cheek. He doesn’t have a clue what she’s going to say next. She’s always been like that— _unpredictable_ , he thinks. Powerful and forceful and dormant because she chooses to be, but only because she chooses to be. She has more potential energy than a springloaded hammer, than a raindrop on the verge of falling, than a wave at its peak and cresting. And she’s sitting across from him with that soft, cryptic smile, cupping her hands around a pastel-tinted coffee mug, with the research they’ve compiled in front of her.

Because she chooses to.

“But you know something?” says Lup. “Heroes ain’t shit. We don’t need to be heroes, babe.”

She smiles. Into the heart of the tempest and the raging, broken shore; staring down the ocean. Challenging it as an equal.

“We’re gonna be legends.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @lichlesbian and on twitter @stellarlesbian!


End file.
